3M date codes on tape, and tape data

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N7SC

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Does anyone know how to read the date codes on the leader on 3M pancakes and labels on reels?

Also, does anyone have or know how to get the 3M datasheet for 996? Some clown has one on eBay he wants $23.00 for. For a single page. Not gonna happen from me.
 
3M date codes are something I'm not sure of. I had a few reels of 226 around until last year and the strings of numbers didn't seem to have any obvious clue to the year of manufacture. One of my reels had a sticker on it that said "3M is an official sponsor of the 1988 olympics" but there was no 88 or even 87 or 89 in any of the numbers, so I gave up trying to crack their top secret code. :D

But I can tell you 996 was introduced in 1990 and stopped production sometime in 1995 when 3M got out of the tape business. So any 996 is going to be at least 10 years old, but not more then 15 at this writing.

3Ms magnetic tape division was acquired by Quantegy in 1996.

I don't know if 3M even had a website for their tape division, or what the URL would have been. I've searched archives for www.3M.com back to 1996, but there is no mention of audio/video tape. I didn't have much luck finding anything on the web when I was looking for specs on 226 a couple years ago, except for the link ARP posted below. ;)
 
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Thanks for the info. The sites Dave posted in response to this question, and that he bumped up in other threads are very informative. What I was looking for was something that might have had, for 3M 996, the kind of great detail that BASF/Agfa/Emtec, and now, RMGI publishes for their tape. With all the graphs, etc. I can make much more sense of that stuff than I can the few numbers for coercivity, retentivity, etc. that 3M appears to have published.

If you ever want to see how a tape spec sheet should be done, IMHO, just take a look at the RMGI website (now making the BASF/Agfa/Emtec tapes) and download one of their PDF spec sheets.

As for 3M date codes, I had found a key to them somewhere, but can't find it again. I think they were as straight forward as Ampex/Quantegy's. At least for the 900 series tapes.
 
That's what I was looking for in the past for 3M, but there doesn't appear to be any pdf spec sheets like EMTEC or Quantegy have. There is nothing online for AGFA either, that I know of. They all got out of the biz before the Internet really took off.
 
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